Alpha, Jasmine on a dark street. Coffee guy from Ep. 1. (Dotts?) Charlie may turn up. Uses her new wrist chip. Sew Sew shows up to give her crap for losing her job and staying at a nice hotel. Scans her, she’s a C-2. Flashes to Charlie in a new apartment with brown water. Sew Sew is slimy, gives her a ride.

CJ narrates about being invisible in the system. Doesn’t fill out the lease agreement, pulls out a wad of cash.

Beta. Ren and Galt, CJ’s gone under ground. CJ talks to a guy named Anansi about being someone else. Ren and Galt recap the shooting at the diner. Back and forth between Porter and Galt talking about finding CJ and CJ getting new IDs from the black market dealer Anansi. Work getting back online with Alpha is slow. Porter tells Galt that some ID sensitive equipment has gone missing as we see the Anansi pull out a laptop with all Porter’s information on it. He tells Charlie they can’t use that ID, but he can get more.

01’s kids playing with a boat. Green gunk pours into the pond.

CJ rings the bell of a guy named Terry who’s in snorkel gear and who’s a bit crazy. He’s Anansi’s main dealer but he doesn’t want to talk to Charlie. Meanwhile Porter trashes Anansi’s place.

01 says the pond may be an old toxic site, his wife says she thought they got them all. Why is it happening now? It’s happened out in the desert. 01 says he has to go, he knows where it’s coming from. Sasha asks him to stay, he says he’ll always come back.

CJ is in Terry’s house, his high tech security system was great. CJ took the door off the hinges. Terry offers CJ some identification. Charlie sees a name, Gemma Gitano and gets all far-away looking. She’s head of Hydrology Dept. and a C2. Flashback to 20 years ago. Young street urchin Charlie and Gemma are avoiding police sweeps. They find a holographic display ball showing a dancer. Cops find them, say it’s Vex-Cor property. Kids make hijinx and escape.

Back to present, Charlie says these IDs can’t help him and ends up “helping” Terry out by taking all the ID sticks and his laptop, which apparently has two years of porn saved on it. Amateur.

01 tells his wife he’s not the same man in Beta. She says he’s been trying to save their world yet he’s done bad things.

Terry is frantically packing, gets pinched by police. They don’t buy his story of magic ID sticks stealing credit card info on their own. Sticks then stolen by some guy. Galt and Porter talk about the identity sticks, how they were replicated by some guy in IT and then lost. They mention a university student who may have some of these sticks and how Charlie is apparently interested in Gemma Gitano and how more of their people are going native in Beta.

In Alpha, Sew Sew is looking up Vex-Cor personnel, including Gulius, Gemma and Charlie. Back in Beta, Gulis calls Gemma who is adamant about the water levels being bad. He interrupts asking her about Charlie. She says she doesn’t know him until he hangs up on her, then she whispers his name.

Charlie’s new digs are Spartan. He’s surfing his newly absconded laptop and Gemma’s files. Apparently Vex-Cor fabricated a Beta past for Gemma, one without Charlie. Flashback to Gemma and Charlie. They look at the dancer in the sphere again. He seems feverish. Back to present Gemma in an apartment where Ajax shows up and tells her to pack, her past has come back to haunt her. Ajax was the blonde cleaner from the shootout in Paula’s diner.

Sew Sew takes a call from Rompkin’s receptionist setting up a meeting.

We finally see Karl. He comes home to no messages, but Charlie’s there to kill a bug for him. Karl didn’t expect to see him again. They kiss and make up, Charlie says he understands why Karl did it, someone did the same thing a long time ago. Then he asks for help trying to find someone.

Sew Sew meets Essa in an aviary/aquarium and they start talking missing persons. She tries to avoid the discussion but Sew Sew says 85 Vex-Cor employees have gone missing all at the same time. She dodges again saying there are 65,000 employees in just this sector, Sew Sew counters with the fact that all the families are gone too. She brushes him off and plays it cool.

Karl and Charlie are outside Gemma’s apartment. They wax nostalgic about the past but go in and find an empty place. Charlie starts jumping to cynical conclusions, then he finds the sphere from their childhood in the fireplace. Charlie and Karl back at Karl’s place figure there’s still time to find her before she disappears again. Gemma is trying to explain to Galt that there’s too much water around the facility and if it can go one way it can go the other. Galt says the project goes on. The water won’t be a secret much longer. She asks if her being moved was punishment, he says she’s fine. Charlie’s on her trail.

01 wakes up to see something burning or misty outside. He dresses, goes into the bathroom. Sasha wakes up and he’s gone.

Gemma is at the lake taking samples. Charlie is spying on her. Suddenly the water starts distorting, disappearing in huge swaths. In seconds, all the water is gone and Gemma is left on a rocky ledge. Charlie runs to her rescue, she recognizes him and asks if he saw what just happened.

01 appears in an alley, a bit sick and slightly translucent. We quickly see Reena who’s a mail room girl. Porter gives her an envelope and says to take it to accounting. She’s says she’ll get it to the right place. “You can count on me, sir.” 01 shows up at the Glass Door, takes a deep breath and you can tell he assumes the mask of the debauchery king of Betaverse. The last scene is an empty valley in Alphaverse being suddenly inundated with water.

Whoosh!

One thing I can say is that Charlie Jade never stops introducing new people. I remember the first episode introduced about five characters and it hasn’t stopped since. My only problem is having to look up names and whether I should even care because by next week we’re off to find new characters.

Case in point, Gemma Gitano. We’ve already seen several flashbacks to Charlie’s Beta days; there’s of course Jasmine, then his partner in the Vex-Cor security team, and his XO. Now there’s a child hood friend. I’m not sure the show can stand more from the past until we settle some things from the present. I really liked seeing Sew Sew going after Vex-Cor and the missing execs and contractors. The show is slowly becoming less about Charlie getting back and more about several people trying to bring Vex-Cor down. 01 and Reena are both trying to save Gamma. Karl is just trying to expose Vex-Cor as a monstrous corporation. The more people we meet, the more they all have in common, and fewer people are seen as trying to link all the Verses.

But to what end? From the opening credits, to 01’s shower transfers to the moving of several million cubic meters, water is obviously the through-line of the entire story. I’m still not sure why. Does Alpha need water? Is it a dying Verse? Do they need it to cool the transfer stations? Then what do they bring through these stations, people? Military? Gold?

If nothing more than this was a frustrating episode to watch, I’m going to rate it lower than normal. Production level it was on par with the rest, even better. But with a limit run of a show, I don’t like having too many questions and more and more people suddenly showing up.

Three and a half blue stones for the next person to bring me one of the 24 identity sticks.